Time: 12:30 – 14:00

Venue: Room G01, G/F, Hui Yeung Shing Building (HYS G01), CUHK

Speaker: BI Yidan (MPhil student, Gender Studies Programme and Department of Sociology, CUHK)

Moderator: Prof. HAN Ling (Assistant Professor, Gender Studies Programme, CUHK)

Abstract:

This article examines the maintenance, negotiation, and resistance of gendered workplace inequalities by studying the experiences of transmen in China. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 31 transmen, 4 non-binary, and 3 transwomen employees, the findings show that despite the structural and interactional restrictions, China’s transmen are working in various industries and have developed creative strategies to navigate gender inequality and enhance workplace incorporation. I categorized the strategies as avoid gender confusion, selling the entrepreneurial self, and circumvent gender troubles. The strategies make visible the social process where workplace discrimination against women and sexual minority is not only produced and maintained by institutional structures and interactions, but also negotiated and actively resisted by transmen through their everyday efforts. By examining the transgender experiences beyond an Anglo-American lens, this research contributes to “decolonizing” queer studies with indigenous knowledge grounded in China’s specific context.

Speaker’s Biography: BI Yidan is an MPhil student in the Gender Studies Programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include gender and work, feminist political economy, NGOs, social movements, and digital platforms. She has been actively engaged in transgender movements in China since 2019, with a particular emphasis on community-based knowledge production. She is currently working on the workplace experiences of transgender people in China, focusing on how they strategically navigate the dual challenges of gender inequality and labor precarity.

Language: English

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13705397